The Bureau of Ability Remedial Education
"Oh? Inspector, two whole minutes late today. What's the occasion?"
"Ah, there was a bit of a commotion, you know. My luck is rotten clean through."
"I heard. Two breakouts before breakfast... today really doesn't look like it's going to be an easy one."
"Well, I've done my part. I'll be off. Don't work yourselves to death!"
"Take care~."
The administrative office on the first floor of the Bureau of Ability Remedial Education. The Dormitory Inspector traded a few easy words with the woman on duty, as if the morning had been perfectly ordinary, then shuffled off and disappeared.
Neither of them seemed to think the breakout from moments ago was worth so much as a speck of concern.
Are they serious?
The man breathing fire hadn't been the only one raising hell on the way here. Later a girl with telekinesis had come out, ripped an interior wall clean out of the building, and the Special Response Team—SORT—had to deploy all over again just to shove her back in.
Insane. What was this place, the SCP Foundation? Kids who could kill a handful of people without breaking a sweat were popping out one after another!!
I was still stunned stupid by that blistering welcome when the clerk spoke, her voice gentle.
"It's a little chaotic here, isn't it? It's your first posting from the outside, so I understand."
"Ah, no, it's fine..."
"As you know, this is where we gather the failures—those who never fully awakened their abilities, or who can't control them. Things like that happen fairly often."
I was going to lose my mind. This really was Arkham Asylum.
"Then please wait just a moment. I'll bring your ID and your assigned work files. They're organized by schedule, so they should be easy to check."
Humming to herself, the clerk disappeared. I yanked the gallery open in a panic.
Naturally, nearly every post was about me and the Bureau of Ability Remedial Education.
The inspector came and called me out, and on the way to the admin office I ran into weird kids twice;;
One redhead suddenly shot fire and smashed a wall, and the other one went berserk with some kind of telekinesis? Is this actually real?
The one shooting fire was seriously trying to attack me
Just like the first verification post, comments sprouted in a wild rush.
Reactions you could see coming a mile away. I hadn't even been awake in this other world for an hour, and my head was already splitting.
"Are you that worried?"
"Ah, you scared me!!"
The clerk had finished her errand and come back before I noticed, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. She let out a short laugh.
"Don't worry too much. The children you'll be looking after should be all right, probably."
"Probably means there's also a chance they won't be."
"Ahaha, they're students, after all. Their emotions swing all over the place. Just think of yourself as a civil servant. Give them whatever they ask for within the rules, and don't get personally involved. That's all."
I looked at the pass and the file folder lying on the bone-white table. The name written there so neatly—Kim Jinsoo, Grade 3 Educational Assistant, Bureau of Ability Remedial Education—made it hit me hard that this, right now, was where things really started.
"If you need help with administrative work later, or if there's something you don't know, come here."
I said goodbye to the clerk and headed for the office listed in the work guide. They called it an office. In practice it was a solitary cell. The only furniture was a desk and a pair of chairs, enough for maybe two people to sit facing each other.
"What kind of work am I supposed to do in here?"
There wasn't a single thing about it I liked, from one end to the other. I decided to use the lull to dig up more on this unidentified institution. If they were going to dump me here with zero abilities and nothing but access to a community, I at least needed an edge in information.
I searched for the nickname that had snagged my eye in the posts just now and sent a DM myself.
The reply flew back in less than a second. If your soul got taxidermied into the gallery... did that mean you really had nothing to do but stare at the gallery forever? The thought was nothing short of horrific.
Ah. So that was why he was SSS-Rank Hunter. Even so, the work seemed close enough, and I decided to pry a little further.
????
What the hell kind of bullshit was that? If your luck was bad, did the thing turn into a horror story? Then again, the moment you failed to seduce an NPC and your soul got mounted in the gallery, it was already a horror story.
I couldn't understand it. This was supposed to be a dating sim...!! So how could every heroine be different? As if he could see straight through my skull, SSS-Rank Hunter tacked on a few more lines.
"......"
I was so dumbfounded the words wouldn't come. What kind of game even was this? And it had still gotten overwhelmingly positive reviews?
Though if this had been an ordinary game and not a possession, it really would have been a god-tier game...
The heroine changed every time you played? How was anyone supposed to resist that? But being possessed the instant you downloaded it, and then dying in all but name if you failed to seduce someone—that was a different story.
Despair. So, to lay it out plain: I was supposed to manage high-risk psych cases in an asylum where I wouldn't catch so much as the tip of a heroine's nose, while diligently running around outside looking for one. Was this really dating-sim difficulty?
That was when it happened.
Knock, knock. Another knock came from beyond the door.
"Who is it?"
I waved the window shut and answered, and the voice of the clerk I'd met in the administrative office came through.
"You found your way all right! Um, have you checked today's work log?"
"Ah...! Just a second!"
I flipped the file open in a rush. It had been May 1, 2028, hadn't it?
☐ Designated student interviews
☐ Write counseling report
☐ Write counseling plan
"Yes! I've confirmed it."
"Then shall we go straight into counseling? The students are waiting."
"......"
I let out a long, slow breath. Right. Think of it kindly. Even looking like this, I was a student at one of Seoul's top universities. In my first year I'd tutored a few times on the side, and in the army I'd counseled plenty of guys as a peer counselor. There was nothing difficult about this. And who knew? Just as SSS-Rank Hunter had said, if I kept the contact going, I might run into a heroine who'd been lying low.
"Ahem...! Yes. I-I'm ready."
A first impression mattered, so I cleared my throat and drew my back straight. Then the door, shut tight until now, opened. In walked a student who looked, to any eye, like someone who'd put several people in the ground. He glared and spoke.
"The hell you looking at, asshole. What, you think being an assistant makes you something?"
"...?"
"Drop your eyes if you don't wanna die."
Ah. The Bureau of Ability Remedial Education. So this was the sort that came through here?
A few interviews as fierce as a storm came to an end. Only the last student remained. I'd been at it for a mere couple of hours, and already it felt as if every ounce of strength had drained out of my body.
"Is there not a single one of them with a normal personality?"
Of course, including the first student, who'd unloaded a string of curses on me at first sight, none of them had actually tried to do me direct harm. Trying would only have gotten them beaten down by the big men in black and hauled off. That didn't mean the interviews had been worth anything, either. Did you eat well, how's your mood these days, any new hobbies, any change in your ability—on and on and on. Obviously none of them were going to answer properly. They swore at me, fired strange questions back, or kept their mouths shut. The reactions boiled down to those three.
"Haha, the kids are a little unique, aren't they?"
The clerk said it lightly, brushing it off. For a second I wanted to snap back that this did not look merely unique, but I didn't have the strength, so I nodded along.
"The next one coming in is cynical, that's all. Her personality's fine. She was an excellent student where she came from, too."
You. The kid who spent the last thirty minutes staring straight at me in a vow of silence—you said he was just taciturn. I seriously thought I was looking at a weeping angel. I was afraid he'd rush me the moment I closed my eyes, so I blinked one at a time.
"Her name is Kayla. She's the last one today, so hang in there!"
The clerk pumped her fist, bright as anything, but even that had started to wear on me.
"......Next, please come in."
And when the door opened for the last time, a girl in a strangely cut uniform stepped through—and in the same instant a status window snapped into being before my eyes.